


that in me sings no more

by EmeraldHeiress



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I am not sorry, Implied/Referenced Major Character Death, Melancholy, Mentions of murder of children, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Obi-Wan's Ridiculous Guilt Complex, POV Obi-Wan, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Slave Transmitter, reflections, you know the scene I'm talking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27734824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldHeiress/pseuds/EmeraldHeiress
Summary: Gentle fingers ran over the switch in his hands. Feeling the dips and curves and edges of the device. Feeling the weight of the responsibility in his hands — in his soul.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 28
Kudos: 99
Collections: New SW Canon Server Works, Tales From the Attic





	that in me sings no more

Gentle fingers ran over the switch in his hands. Feeling the dips and curves and edges of the device. Feeling the weight of the responsibility in his hands — in his soul. 

Breathing deep, Obi-Wan focused on the memories of his young padawan. So shining and bright in the Force. Eager to learn; eager to please. Perhaps a little over eager, sometimes. It had gotten him — them — into trouble more than once.

Raising his padawan had been one of the most difficult things that Obi-Wan had ever done. Anakin had always been a challenge. Headstrong and overconfident, he got into far more trouble than he seemed to be able to get out of, oftentimes dragging Obi-Wan down with him. Yet, it was a task that he had always considered worth the sacrifice.

To see Anakin grow. To see him learn. To see him become his own man. 

That bright child had become a beacon. 

So strong and pure in the Force it was nearly blinding at times. 

Over the war, he had seen that beacon slowly dim. Dull with the heaviness around them. The weight of all the death, the destruction, the misery that they saw day after after day after day. 

All the people they couldn’t save. All the lives ruined.

He had always tried to be there for Anakin. A shoulder shoulder to lean on. A friend and an ear. 

It had hurt to watch his padawan pull away.

Through the bond, stretched over space, he could feel the weight of the war on the boy’s shoulders. The weight of his own secrets. 

_Padmé_.

Obi-Wan could hardly deny his own hurt when he had discovered their relationship. He had thought Anakin and he were closer than that. Thought that, after all this time, his padawan trusted him more.

He should have known. The looks on Anakin’s face at any mention of the young queen, and then later, the senator. _He should have known_. He should have nipped it in the bud before it went too far. 

_Too far_ were not really the right words for… for _this_. For death around him. Tainting the once-bright Temple. _Their home._

Anakin had always had problems with attachment. 

Never knowing how or when to let go, no matter how many times that Obi-Wan tried to teach him. Tried to explain. 

To love… to love was wonderful. While he had been hurt to have not been told, he was so happy that Anakin had found it. He could see Anakin’s love and joy in the Force when he looked at his young wife. Feel it echo when he spoke of her. But he had known… had known that if it were ever a choice between his padawan's duty — between the galaxy, and his wife — that Anakin would choose Padmé. 

How could he not?

Obi-Wan could never have expected that choice would lead to this. The destruction of the Temple, the bodies of their brothers and sisters, of their friends, lay around him. A gaping maelstrom of agony and desperation and terror in the Force. 

The floor red with the blood of their children.

Obi-Wan wondered, in his own quiet agony, what Anakin had been offered. Wondered what he had been so afraid of that _this_ was the option he preferred. The devastation of their family, of their home, of their way of life.

He’d watched, over the last several months, as Anakin seemed to fray. Tearing himself apart from the lies, from the sleepless nights, and the pressure of the war. 

The pressure of the galaxy on his shoulders. The _Hero With No Fear._ It had always been taken so personally by his padawan. The boy never learned.

Obi-Wan had to admit he hadn’t been a very good example for Anakin in that, shouldering more than his own fair share of pressure. His own fair share of the war.

_The war._

A war that they now knew had been nothing more than a series of moves in a dejarik game to set the Chancellor — the _sith lord_ — up as the new reigning emperor of the galaxy.

With Anakin by his side. 

Obi-Wan’s stomach dropped, remembering the dark stare of his padawan on the holovid as he stood next to Palpatine. Looming and lethal. 

How many signs had they missed? 

For years the Force had been clouded, growing darker, heavier with every passing season. Exponentially so when the war began. Always the most oppressive in Coruscant. 

_They should have known._

Clouded in the Force or not, they were still intelligent beings. Able to think. Able to analyze the evidence in front of them. How had they been misdirected so… so severely? 

Guilt twisted in Obi-Wan’s chest. Guilt for the signs he had missed. The times they could have acted…

Why hadn’t he listened more closely to the warnings? More closely to his own feelings?

It had never quite sat well with him; why the Chancellor of the Republic would make so much time for a young padawan. 

And Anakin had hardly been the only jedi on Naboo that day. Obi-Wan's own master had lost his life in defense of the planet. _To the sith apprentice._ And he himself had been there. Still, the Chancellor had never invited Obi-Wan to meet with him, to break bread, to be a confidant like he did with Anakin. 

It had never sat right.

And now he knew why. 

How much of this long game, of this web, had they missed. How much of it could they have prevented if only he had said something. If only he had looked into it further instead of dismissing his unease.

Slowly, he walked through the halls, his gut turning with a tangled mess of emotions he wasn’t sure he could even parse. 

His self-recrimination.

His heart broken.

That his padawan… the one he loved most in the world — the things he had done. The choices he had made. Shame rose in Obi-Wan’s throat, bitter on the back of his tongue.

How much could he have prevented? 

Could he have saved Anakin?

Could he have saved the Temple? 

The Force pressed against him, dark and full of expectation. Of the fear and misery and pain, echoing across the galaxy. The halls of his home would never be the same. The imprint of what happened here was soaked into the very stones of the building. It could never be cleansed. 

The blood would forever stain the floor.

Blood on Anakin’s hands.

How much of that was on his own?

Anakin's bright smile clashed in his mind with the sight of him cutting down the younglings in the Council Chambers.

 _Children_.

Outside of training, he had never known Anakin to so much as raise a hand to a child, let alone a saber. It all felt like a dream — a nightmare. It was only the scent of copper in the air and the feeling of the Force that assured him that this was his awful reality.

Ahsoka. 

What would he — could he —tell Ahsoka? Had she even made it or was she lying — still and broken — on the cold floor somewhere on Mandalore? Shot down by her own men. Her friends. 

He’d felt it happen. A ripple in the Force. The change. He hadn’t known what it was at the time but he certainly hadn’t expected one of his dearest friends to turn his blaster on him.

Was Anakin responsible for that, too? For the death of their men, in spirit if not in actuality? He’d seen the emptiness in their eyes. The stiffness in their movements. And he had known they weren’t themselves anymore.

His Anakin would never have done anything like that. Would never have enslaved a single person let alone an entire army. Every moment, Obi-Wan had to remind himself that his Anakin was gone.

Obi-Wan’s feet stopped at the door of their apartments. 

The rooms he had raised Anakin in. That his padawan, a knight with a padawan of his own, had never left. 

He pressed a hand against the door, hesitating. Letting the memories, the warmth and soft love that had made it their home, move through him.

Learning to cook with Anakin at his side, trying spicy Tatooine dishes. Tripping over droid parts and sitting quiet companionship as he read. Warm tea on cold days and a room filled with laughter. The stumbles of fitting Ahsoka in, of accommodating her diet and finding her space. Returning after a Council meeting to the sight of Anakin and Ahsoka sprawled together across the couch, fast asleep. 

Shaking his head, freeing it from the cobwebs of its reverie, he entered. 

Everything was exactly as it had been when he left.

_Force, was it only a week ago?_

Leaving for Utapau, intent on his mission, he hadn’t bothered to clean on his way out. To pick up the half-drunk mug of tea or the put away the plate he had eaten from. Anakin’s own empty cup sat beside them. A dull brown ring staining the bottom where the last dregs of its contents had dried in the air. 

The discordance of shambles outside against the soft harmony of their apartments was jarring. Obi-Wan didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to disrupt the tranquility of the space. To taint it by letting in the outside world. 

After a moment, he forced himself to move forward, shutting the door as he went. To block out the carnage and ruins.

Eyes traveled over the room. Taking in the same familiar scents and feeling of their life. Of normalcy. It would be the last of such moments he had.

This was already lost to him.

A hand reached out, touching a well worn cloak hanging over the back of a chair. Feeling the softness under his palm. He mourned a moment for the plants, sitting neatly on the window sill. They would die, like everyone else, with no one to water them. To care for them. 

He could not carry them from here. 

Turning his head, his feet took him to Anakin’s room. 

It had changed almost as much as its owner over the years. Once the drawings were pinned to the walls brought in the colors of Tatooine and krayts, the soft eyes of his mother, and all the flowers of the gardens into the small space. Over time they came down, replaced with other pictures. Images of ships and planets and droids. 

The places they’d seen over their missions. 

Reflections of their life together.

Ilum, Ryloth, Alderaan, all scattered across the walls, the skill of the hand growing with each new drawing. 

Yet some things always remained the same.

The workbench overfull with bits of technology. The droid parts scattered around the room. As he looked now, one of the mouse droids for the Temple lay open on the bench, its parts scattered on top of it like marbles across sand.

He wondered, briefly, what Anakin had been doing. Adding some ridiculous upgrade he was sure. It would never be completed.

The imprint of Anakin filled the room. His memory warm like the suns of the planet he was born to; the scent of desert wind traced with a hint of the orchids of Naboo.

And Obi-Wan’s chest ached.

How did it all go so wrong?

One step. 

Two. 

Slowly, he lowered himself to the bed. Fingers ran over the threads of the blanket. The bold colors that had drawn his padawan’s eyes in one of the many markets they had visited across the galaxy.

Anakin had always been so cold. Even as an adult, he never quite grew out of it. Coming from a desert planet, Obi-Wan wasn’t truly surprised. Everytime they were in a new place, he was always compelled to bring home a new blanket. Privately, Obi-Wan had believed it was because he always forgot his own. 

It was always so much colder in space, on the ships, and his padawan never remembered to bring a spare for his own comfort. 

Obi-Wan had always packed it. Secreting it away, knowing his padawan’s tendencies, for the time it was needed. Either way, one look at those big blue eyes, pleading with him, and he would cave. They would bring home another new one, carefully packed alongside the others. It would eventually make its way to Anakin's bed, spread out over with the others. Piled high. 

He knew there were at least three under his hands, even if he could only see the very top layer. This one, he remembered, they had bought on Ryloth. The patterns there were unique to the planet. Special. 

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, remembering the trip. It had been a good one.

A tremor in the Force reminded Obi-Wan what he was here to do. What he _had_ to do. 

His finger trembled as they caressed the switch, his gut turning. He knew his task, but everything in him protested against it. 

Anakin was his padawan. 

His brother. 

His friend. 

The weight of what Anakin had become sat heavily across his shoulders and in his belly. The guilt and the shame. This was his burden,

For the younglings, slain at the hand of his own apprentice, laying like dolls broken dolls on the floors of the Council Chamber.

For their brothers and sisters, resting forever in their own blood spread across the Temple. _Their home_. Shot by their troops or cut down by Anakin’s own hands. 

For the galaxy.

The galaxy that couldn’t afford a sith with the strength of a force-born. The sheer power that Anakin commanded. The death toll… he shuddered. It would be astronomical.

Obi-Wan knew if he asked that Yoda would take this burden from him. Would save him from committing this… _betrayal_.

~~Was it even a betrayal? After what Anakin had done? After Anakin’s own?~~

But he wouldn't — couldn’t — ask the other master to bear this act. It was his burden to endure. His sacrifice to make. His punishment.

Punishment for all the times that he had failed. For his padawan. For Ahsoka. 

He breathed, taking comfort in knowing that it would be quick. Near painless. 

That his action would save _so very many_ people. 

A thumb rolled over the switch again, feeling the shape of it. The weight of it. Of what he had to do. 

_Anakin had trusted him._

But yet… Perhaps he was saving him. 

Obi-Wan could feel the edge of the shatterpoint around him, even if he didn’t have Mace’s ability to see it. He knew that what he was about to do would shape the future in a whole new way. 

That it would change the future of the galaxy. 

He could on hope it was for the better. 

Tears clouded his vision and he wondered when he had started to cry. His heart pounded in his chest, hammering against the ache within it. The ache of his sorrow and his love for Anakin. 

Forever lost to them. 

The ache of his own actions. 

He stretched out, feeling the Force as it thickened around him. Heavy with tension. 

Expectant.

 _Waiting_. 

Obi-Wan took another breath, deep and full.

And flipped the switch. 

The Force around him seemed to shatter, the tension spent. A ripple of feeling echoed back. A wave of tangled rage and fear. And finally… pained relief. 

_Relief_. 

The Force was calm. 

And Obi-Wan cried, silent and still. Sitting on his padawan’s bed. 


End file.
